RE: Universal Acceptance of IDN TLDs

there’s a gap between IDN and URI in that IRI -> URI would prefer to use the %xx percent-hex URL encoding in general.

What would be preferable would be to insure that DNS requests for %xx encoded names is an acceptable alternative to punycode.


From: Andre Schappo [mailto:A.Schappo@lboro.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 3:51 PM
To: www International
Cc: Don Hollander; public-iri@w3.org
Subject: Re: Universal Acceptance of IDN TLDs

① Is this document available online? I have looked round http://aptld.org but cannot find it.

② There are indeed barriers to the effective, real world use of IDNs. A fundamental problem is that IDNs, in general, are not properly catered for and not properly integrated into systems. One reason often quoted for treating IDNs differently is "Security". Well, I posit that any IDN security issues pale in comparison to the ubiquitous "… for further information please click here."

Here are some examples from Social Media:

Twitter

If the Unicode form is entered —

#test  http://北大.中国


It is not recognised as a Domain Name & not displayed as clickable link

If the punycode form is entered —

#test http://xn--djry4l.xn--fiqs8s


It is now recognised as a Domain Name and displayed as a clickable link but displayed as punycode instead of Unicode

Sina Weibo

Same results —
#test# http://北大.中国

#test# http://xn--djry4l.xn--fiqs8s


There is also the related issue of having to Percent Encode the Unicode pathname components of a URL.

③ In my experience, another fundamental problem is the lack of IT Internationalization teaching in Schools and Universities. Certainly in England, IT Internationalisation has not yet become an accepted part of the curriculum. We need to produce students that have an appreciation/understanding of IT Internationalisation in order to, amongst other goals, properly integrate IDNs into systems/apps/websites …etc…

For several years I have been teaching a module entitled "International Computing" which covers several aspects of IT i18n. One of the topics I cover is IDNs :) And I am keeping my students up to date with the idn new gTLDs as they are delegated to DNS Root :)

During my years teaching this module I have found few students (regardless of which country they come from) with even a basic appreciation of IT Internationalization because it is a topic that was never discussed/raised in their prior studies.

So, any initiative in "to improve the use of IDN TLDs in the real world" should get Universities onboard and encourage Universities/Schools to teach "IT Internationalization"

André
http://schappo.blogspot.co.uk


On 4 Mar 2014, at 12:14, Richard Ishida wrote:


I was contacted last week by Don Hollander, General Manager of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association, who is trying to improve the use of IDN TLDs in the real world, and looking for support.

See the attached PDF (from him) outlining what are the barriers to the effective use of IDN TLDs and who can help address these issues.

He's hoping to create a community of interested stakeholders. He expects this community to include ICANN, many ccTLDs, ISOC, and hopefully commercial developers. He is also looking to set up some opportunities to meet and discuss how to move things forward.

If you are interested in getting involved, please raise your voice.

Don says "There is a HUGE population with interest in this - but it is not really the current 2Billion, but the next 2 Billion - those who aren’t yet connected."

RI
<Addressing the issue of Universal Acceptance of IDN TLDs-1.pdf>

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